fkr - exploration is key to excellence

Since my (almost) seven-year-old son has enjoyed listening to stories that I make up on the run while giving him choices on how to continue the story, I started considering introducing him to the world of pen-and-paper roleplaying games. While at 39C3 there were RPG sessions for kids (without any specific ruleset). We did not attend those, but afterward I started researching which ruleset would be appropriate.

Hero Kids

I quickly came across Hero Kids - which appealed to me since the content has been translated to various languages, including German (our mother tongue). While I feel comfortable to also translate on the fly, this does make things a tad easier. The intro page to the game is here. Hero Kinds has been created by Justin Halliday.

Everything is available through DriveThruRPG and there are several bundles available.

First Steps

The rule book comes with a first adventure, and the rule book has some predefined characters. While we were going over the pre-defined characters, exactly what I hoped for happened: “Can I create my own character?” my son asked. Wohooo - of course: let’s go!

Hero Kids is targeted at kids between the ages of 4 and 10. Especially if you like improvising. and creating your own style in Hero Kids is fun, since it easily lets you adapt stuff.

We played the initial adventure, ‘Basement O Rats’ and it became clear that he was hooked on the game.

Monster Compendium

The Monster Compendium comes with many printable figures, and my son really likes “building” (cutting them out and gluing them to a cardboard foot) with me. Together with the Brecken Vale Gazetteer these are perfect resources for extending the games.

Fire in Rivenshore

The next adventure we played was Fire in Rivenshore which actually features not only a good story about helping and making some though decisions but also a moral dilemma. It was interesting to see how my son approached that. So far we’ve only played among us two - next step is to assemble a small group with his friends and see how that works out. :)

I’m now off preparing the next adventure for us to dive in!